exact decimal type, was: 12.3*70.95 a little bit weird

Dan, as others have pointed out, the discrepancy you observed
stems from floating point numbers being only approximations
to decimal numbers.

I wonder if it would be worth the trouble to invent an exact
decimal type for Maxima. One can already get exact arithmetic
by using fractions, e.g. 123/10 instead of 12.3 or 95/100 instead
of 0.95, but that's kind of clumsy. How about something like,
I don't know, 12.3x0 to denote a number exactly equal to 123/10 ?
Any interest in that?

best

Robert Dodier